


let me crawl inside your veins, build a wall give you a ball and chain

by portraitofwlw



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Child Abuse, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I'm sorry in advance for sad little roman roy, Mild Blood, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, the blood is very brief but heed the abuse warning, this is my comfort het ship now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26167195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofwlw/pseuds/portraitofwlw
Summary: He trusts her more than anyone he's ever known; given the chance he'd probably do everything the same if it meant he'd end up outside her door.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 11
Kudos: 86





	let me crawl inside your veins, build a wall give you a ball and chain

**Author's Note:**

> well...here I am in a place I never thought I'd be...the F/M tag of ao3. Anything for my little rat boy.

He doesn’t go to her after Argestes. It’s all too much; there’s the slap and then Kendall is right there, yelling in his fucking ear that’s already ringing so loud he can barely hear anything, and Shiv’s hand is on his shoulder and her red hair is dangling in his face and blocking his line of sight and suddenly he’s ten years old again, being comforted by his sister and cowering from his father. He thought things would’ve changed by now, thought maybe he’d become invincible to his father’s blows, both physical and verbal, but none of them had managed that yet. Then, only once his father has been ushered out of the room by Marcia, once Kendall has given him a little breathing room and Tom has wandered off somewhere, likely banished by Shiv, he spits his tooth out. He spits his fucking tooth out. A molar. And he realizes too late that Gerri hasn’t left yet, that she’s still loitering around the doorway, that she can clearly see the red string of bloody spit connecting the broken tooth in his palm to his lip. She looks like she might say something, or throw up the hundred dollar salmon she ate for dinner in the trash can, but before Roman can get a good look at her to decide which of the two it is, Shiv is tugging his hand away from him and asking a million questions, her maternal side manifesting in a nagging, overbearing presence that won’t leave him alone. By the time he lurches out of her-- and Kendall’s-- clutches, Gerri is gone.

So he doesn’t go to her that night. Doesn’t seek out her comfort, or her insults, or whatever the fuck she would give him in a situation more serious than him masturbating in her bathroom or her fixing his latest issue in a string of impressively bad fuck ups. He also doesn’t manage to catch the look on her face when Logan first made contact with his skin: the look of horror turned anger turned fear that graced her features. That persistent ringing in his ears paired with Kendall’s outburst-- twenty years too late-- keeps him from hearing her almost frantic attempts to calm Logan down, to get that fire in his eyes that made her think he might knock another one of Roman’s teeth out, on the other side this time, for symmetry, to dwindle too. She’d always been able to predict what Logan was going to do, been one step ahead of him and his ploys to make people do his bidding, but she hadn’t expected this. She’d thought about it once or twice, wondered what the hell happened to the Roy’s as children to make them act this way, but to see it confirmed in front of her was another thing entirely, to see _Roman_ be used as a punching bag, has left her flailing, trying to correct a car skidding into an icy intersection. 

Things changed after that, both in terms of their relationship and everything else outside of them. Their world had shifted on its axis, everything rushing around them like a whirlwind of corporate crimes and personal betrayals. Gerri had almost been fed to the dogs, Roman had almost gotten his brains blown out by a bunch of Turkish guys, the company had nearly collapsed, Kendall had turned the entire corporate world on its head with a single sentence. The score was pretty fair. Roman didn’t know that Gerri’s loyalty had been chipped away that night in Argestes, that Logan had a strike on him he would never be able to settle with her, that a thirty year career working under someone had been tested over a molar. He didn’t know about the protective streak that had flared up in her, made her come dangerously close to cursing Logan out just as Kendall had and throwing her entire career away. All he knew is that things were different. Gerri had made it clear that she trusted Roman after the cruises fiasco, that he was more than her lap dog. They hadn’t ventured far outside of their hotel room hookup comfort zone, but still he knew she probably cared about him more than anyone in his life at the moment, and did so without any benefit of her own, unlike anyone he’d ever known. 

-

It had been worse this time. They were alone in the room, no Kendall to scream or Marcia to gently soothe-- Marcia never spent any time with Logan anymore, had one foot out the door at all times-- no Shiv to grab his hand and clutch onto his arm and look terrified under her usual mask. It had started calm like things with Logan always did, he liked to lull his victims into a false sense of security, but then Roman had made some stupid remark and a hand had made its way across his cheekbone, smacking him with a solid _thump_ in his eye and a few well placed fingertips hitting his temples. It was enough to blind him for a second, to leave him completely unprepared for the second blow, a continuation of the first one, a backhand landing squarely on the left side of his nose. That might’ve been it if the company they’d had for dinner hadn’t declined an offer to stay the night, if Roman hadn’t made a joke about Logan’s impending divorce, hadn’t looked pointedly to Marcia, who had a gleeful glint in those deep brown eyes, either at the comment or at the anger she knew it would evoke in Logan, if Roman had just kept his mouth shut. But he hadn’t. So Logan gave him one more hard smack for good measure, clipping his ear this time and really making it ring. Then he’d shouted at Roman to get the hell out and Roman listened, no longer a 33 year old man but a seven year old boy scared of his dad’s wrath. 

Roman stumbled out of the room, his feet carrying him independently of his brain, making a mad dash for somewhere he wouldn’t be seen, somewhere he could put himself together and hide his soft underbelly from anymore attacks. He bumped into a maid on the way, didn’t apologize, glared at her when she looked at him, concerned. He passed someone with red hair, someone who could’ve been Shiv, if he’d taken a second to look at her, ignored the faint calls she threw after him that sounded something like, “What the hell happened to you?” He almost tripped going up the third flight of stairs, up to where the guest bedrooms were, almost smashed his face against the carpet. The hallways felt like a maze that he had to traverse, constantly stretching and warping like he was in one of his shitty horror movies. Eventually he ended up outside of Gerri’s door, confused as to how the hell he got there. 

He somehow manages to knock even though his whole body feels like concrete, and _fuck_ did the blow to his ear throw off his balance or something because he’s swaying like he’s about to topple over and he has this killer headache, the kind that throbs behind your eyes, and his cheeks feel hot and sensitive and-

The door opens. 

Gerri is standing there in her silk pajamas, a different set to the one’s she was wearing that first night when he jerked off in her bathroom, her glasses perched on her nose and an exasperated expression on her face. That look is quickly exchanged for one of shock, then concern, and he doesn’t even have to ask to be let in, she just moves aside and he stumbles through the doorway. It’s silent for a moment, a beautiful reprieve to the constant stimulation bombarding Roman’s brain for the last ten minutes. But the silence is broken when Gerri says “Jesus Christ!” and rushes over to the night table to grab a handful of tissues-- and fuck, he’s got a bloody nose, can see the drops of blood on the wood floor beneath him. The tissues are shoved under his nose by Gerri’s well manicured fingers while the other hand finds the back of his head and keeps him bent forward, still firm and demanding even now. 

“What the hell happened?” She echos Shiv, knowing he can’t answer her just yet. He doesn’t even try, just keeps his head tilted forward, letting Gerri keep the tissue held firmly against his nose to hinder the steady flow of blood pouring out of him. He can feel his phone buzzing in his pocket with message after message, knows they’re all from Shiv without even looking, all demanding an explanation for why he came stumbling out of Logan’s office with a handprint on his cheek. He grabs the device from his pocket and tosses it away into a corner, not caring if it breaks or not. 

It takes a while for the bleeding to stop, for Gerri to take the tissue away and not immediately press a new one to his face. He feels a little light headed when he straightens up again, black spots appearing in his vision as he blinks and takes in his surroundings. 

Gerri has her arms crossed, like she’s angry at him for bleeding on her floor or interrupting her night, but Roman knows her well enough to recognize the line she gets in her forehead when she's worried. She seems to be waiting for him to speak, so he does.

“Aren’t you going to offer me something to drink?” 

She scoffs at him, and disappears into the bathroom for a second, then reappears with a cup of water. He rolls his eyes and takes it anyway, noticing that the cup is ceramic, that there’s the faintest imprint of lipstick on one side. He aligns his lips with the mark and drinks the whole glass. Gerri still hasn’t said anything, seems to be taking the approach of waiting until he can’t handle the silence any longer and fesses up.

Instead of talking he sits on the edge of her bed, looks up at her with his best bedroom eyes, and waits too. Maybe he’ll get lucky and this night will end with something enjoyable that he can choose to remember in the morning instead of the feeling of humiliation lodged in his throat. Maybe Gerri will call him a piece of shit or worthless, or maybe she’ll come up with something more creative and Roman will have a new phrase to add to the list of things that get him hard the second they’re mentioned. He’s halfway there just thinking about it. 

But Gerri isn’t having it tonight, won’t budge. He’s putty in her hands and she’s refusing to play with him, toss him around, stretch him and bend him and mold him into the shape she wants. Instead she just gives him this look, this look of real, unfiltered, concern. At first he can’t help but feel a wave of overwhelming anger, can’t help but stand up and want to curse her out, call her a fucking bitch and tell her he doesn’t need her pity and to stop looking at him like that. But then for some reason he sits back down and starts to cry. His tears feel hot against his burning cheeks, now covered in a layer of embarrassment along with the blood that has risen from the slaps, and his nose is running (it’s not blood again, he wiped it a little to check). 

Gerri hardly looks shocked, like she’s been prepared for this the moment he stumbled through the door. She sits next to him on the bed, scooching him to the right a little so she has more room, and looks at him, seemingly figuring out if she should touch him or just leave him alone. He’s not sure which one she should do either, doesn’t really know what to expect from her now that he’s here, doesn’t have anything to compare it to other than a single instance when he ran away from home at age eight and found his way to her lake house across a few miles from where his family was staying. He showed up crying on her doorstep, wet from the swim over, and one of her daughters had answered the door. At least she’d had the decency to grab a beach towel and usher him in and get him something to eat, even if later that night he could hear her snickering with her sister from the next room over. Gerri had sat him down at the kitchen table and watched him eat, silent as she tried to figure out what to do with him. She eventually drove him back home despite his childish pleas to let him stay the night at least, to not tell Logan what had happened, to just let him run away and pretend she hadn’t seen him. He didn’t speak to her for three years after, still reeling from the betrayal when he hit puberty. But he’s forgiven her for that, trusts her now. She puts a hand on the back of his neck and pulls him to her. 

He doesn’t press into the skin of her neck even though he wants to, wants to take deep gulping breaths of the perfume she always wears, because his face is too tender for any real pressure. He’s still crying, must look like a complete mess, but she lets him rest his chin on her shoulder, rubs his back through the sobs, infinitely more comforting than when Shiv does it. It doesn’t feel like she’s waiting for it to be over, instead it feels like all of her attention in this moment is devoted to him, a privilege few things and even fewer people are awarded. 

When his tears finally stop falling, just like the blood from his nose it all stops eventually, she pulls back and looks at him and asks again, “What happened Rome?” 

The nickname is enough to make him choke on his next breath and force him to swallow a sob that bubbles up. 

“Oh, you know, I never seem to be able to make it through a family gathering without saying something to piss off good old Pops.” 

Gerri frowns at him, put off by his attempt at humor, and his mood follows hers into a more somber headspace. 

“Seriously Ger, I’m fine” --she frowns even further-- “I got under his skin and he got a little carried away.” Roman tries to brush a bit of hair that’s fallen into his face aside and winces when he touches the skin around his eye, not helping his case. Gerri doesn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“Did he really hit you with a slipper when you were younger?”

Roman can’t help but bark out a laugh at that, at how absurd his life really is. 

“It was his weapon of choice, I think the belt made him feel too barbaric or something, too caveman-esque. He only used it once.” He doesn’t tell her that that single time was after she dropped him off at his lake house, would’ve said it to someone else, but can’t to Gerri. He can be a dick to her, but he can’t hurt her, especially can’t put any more weight on her shoulders. Still, he can’t stop laughing even as he speaks, even as he remembers the welts that painted his back for days after that, how he wasn’t allowed to swim that week without a shirt, still he cackles like he’s suffering some kind of mental break. 

Gerri doesn’t seem to find a single ounce of humor in the situation. 

“He can really pack a punch with that thing though, believe me.” 

Roman keeps laughing, so much that his stomach is starting to hurt. He feels like a hyena, or a rabid dog, acting out and making everyone in the room uncomfortable as always. But Gerri won’t fucking say anything, and he has to fill this silence somehow, so the sound keeps coming out of him. He wonders if Gerri knows about the dog cage, if Logan had joked about it in his office to Frank or Karl or whoever the hell was under his wing at that point, his stupid runt of a son who “enjoyed” being locked up in a cage (the thought makes his stomach turn) and before he can think twice about it, his tongue is spelling out the words to her. 

“Do you know Kendall used to lock me in the fucking dog cage?” 

By the look on Gerri’s face, she didn’t. At least he knows now that his father hadn’t joked about it to his employees. 

She speaks for the first time in what feels like forever, gets up and excuses herself for a second. The way she jumps up, it’s like her body can’t contain the amount of energy cramped up in her. She rushes off to the ensuite and shuts the door, turning on the fan so he can’t hear what she’s doing in there. He isn’t laughing anymore. 

He cranes his neck to get his ear a little closer to the door, makes his headache worse by focusing so much on the tiny sounds he can hear, curses Logan for hitting his ear, which is still ringing a little. He hears something he can’t quite place, then a toilet flush and a sink start to run, assumes that Gerri just had to use the bathroom or something, that she’s coming right back out, but then he clearly hears the sound of shattering glass. It pierces through the noise of the fan and the ringing of his ears and his body acts on impulse, rushing to the door and trying the handle that won’t open. The bitch locked the door, of course she did. Roman bangs on the door, jiggles the handle again, makes a commotion that, if the house was smaller, would definitely attract unwanted attention. Before he can do something even more rash like slam his weight into the door and try to knock it down, Gerri twists the knob and the door swings open. 

She has her hand out, blocking him from coming in, and Roman can see a pile of glass on the floor behind her. 

“I dropped it.” She offers as an explanation, but Roman can tell it’s bullshit the second it comes out of her mouth. The glass shards on the floor are the remnants of a few, maybe three, glass figurines that decorate a shelf above the toilet. _Dropped them my ass_ , he thinks.

“You’re a better liar than that Ger-Bear” he mocks her, wanting to get a rise out of her, “what were you doing? Tossing around the decor in a fit of rage?” 

She has the gall to roll her eyes at him, but a bit of pink rises on her neck, and Roman knows he’s struck some form of the truth. She pushes past him in a huff, leaves the glass on the floor behind her. 

“Don’t touch it. I’ll call someone to pick up.” 

“Now?” Roman whips around. If someone comes, he’ll have to leave. They can’t be seen in Gerri’s room this late. 

“No, tomorrow so you have the chance to cut your feet up first thing in the morning, yes now.” She scoffs at him, but Roman barely registers the insult, instead is flooded with a euphoric relief that Gerri isn’t going to send him away just yet.

A maid comes quickly once Gerri calls, a bucket, gloves, and a vacuum in tow. It’s excruciatingly awkward, waiting silently with his back to the bathroom so she can’t see the blossoming bruise around his eye. She leaves just as fast as she comes, only an extra fifty and a stern look from Gerri given to her as thanks. Once she’s out of the room Roman turns around, makes his way to the bathroom to look at his face for the first time that night. His cheeks have mostly stopped tingling, but the rawness hasn’t fully faded, and neither has the headache. He scavanges through a few drawers of makeup, hair products, and night creams before he finds the Advil tucked away. The noise has drawn Gerri to the doorway, where she looks on at him. 

“Going through my shit Rome?”

He holds up the bottle of Advil in response. 

“Not like you have anything interesting in here anyway.” 

He swallows two of the pills dry and turns to the mirror, finally facing himself. He looks like a disaster. The overhead light isn’t doing him any favors, but even without it he still has a developing bruise on his left eye, two faint handprints across his cheeks, red rimmed swollen eyes, and a trace of blood and snot smeared under his nose. He can’t look away, like he’s passing a car wreck on the highway, marvelling at the destruction. 

“I might have foundation in your shade.” Gerri says, coming into the bathroom and standing just behind his shoulder. 

“Ha ha.” Roman says, not taking his eyes off of the discolored skin around his eye. “I’ll just tell everyone we were having crazy sex and you punched me in the face or something.” 

She rolls her eyes at him again, but there’s a hint of that smirk he loves so much, a peek of her teeth behind her lips. She puts a hand on his shoulder and makes him look at her and away from his disaster area of a face. She grabs a washcloth from the rack and runs it under the tap, then presses it to the skin under his nose, wiping away the dried blood and turning the white material pink. Now that she’s closer to him he can smell the faint traces of vomit and mouthwash on her, and he realizes the sounds he was hearing from earlier, before Gerri started throwing glass around, were retching. He doesn’t say anything, thinks of kissing her instead. 

Once she’s done cleaning his nose a hand comes up to touch his cheek lightly, and Roman forces himself not to flinch for fear that she’ll pull her hand back. 

“What will you really tell them?” 

“I fell out of bed, slipped in the shower, something like that.” It’s too rehearsed, and it bothers Gerri. Roman knows Shiv will see through it, will force him to endure her questions when she can get him alone. He’s used the same excuses since he was a kid, can’t be bothered to come up with something more creative when people only half pay attention anyway. Gerri is looking at his bruise with a dull blaze of fury in her eyes, and it suddenly makes more sense why she was throwing glass angel figurines around. 

The hand that was on his cheek comes down on the buttons of his shirt and rests there, hesitating and giving Roman the chance to stop her. He thinks for a second that they’re going to fuck, and finds he doesn’t want that. But the look in Gerri’s eyes tells him that’s not what’s about to happen, so he lets her undo his buttons one by one, eventually leaving him in his undershirt only. She looks at him again, not pitying him but with a softness he hasn’t ever seen from her. 

“I’m tired.” He says, and she knows he’s talking about more than wanting to go to bed. 

She nods and leads him back out of the bathroom without another word. 

He stands there like an idiot, not sure if he should get under the covers, if that’s what Gerri wants him to do. He’d sleep on the fucking floor if it meant he could be near her, but the bed would be nice. 

“Roman” she breaks him from his daze, “Did your brain dribble out of your nose?” She gestures to the bed and pulls down her side of the covers. 

Roman yanks his slacks off, lets them pool on the floor where they'll definitely wrinkle, and gets in silently, lying there stiff as a board. He can hear Gerri sigh and roll over next to him. It’s dark in the room now but he can make out the lines of her face and frown on her lips. 

“Rome.” 

He turns his head to look at her. 

“Come here.” She pulls him closer to her, into her personal space, and it’s almost too much for him to handle. Gerri is two inches from his face, so close he can almost bump noses with her, and if he rolled over she’d be _spooning_ him, and fuck it, bruises and tender skin be damned, he leans in even closer and kisses her. She lets him kiss her. It doesn’t last particularly long nor is it especially languid but her lips are soft and one of her hands runs through his hair and he can’t remember the last time he felt like this. Once she’s pulled back Roman just leans in further, pressing his face into the place where her neck meets her shoulder like he wants her to swallow him up, smelling her perfume and the shampoo she uses and forcing himself not to wrap his arms around her for fear it'd be a step too far. But Gerri throws an arm around his back, lets him sink into her, and he does the same. She’s _holding_ him, in the truest sense of the word. He has to stop himself from crying again, from breaking down even further, and he needs to hear her say something. 

She must be a mind reader or something, because he feels the vibrations of her throat and then she’s talking to him again. 

“You didn’t deserve it.” 

The words he’s been waiting to hear all night. He can’t even bring himself to scoff.

A sob rips through his chest, not out of pain or shock, completely different from the one earlier, and Gerri grips him harder, pulls him further into her embrace. It doesn’t matter what excuse he’ll have to make for his bruises tomorrow, or how shitty and sore he’ll feel in the morning, or how early he’ll have to wake up because Gerri gets up at 7:30 everyday without fail, because for right now he feels better than he has in a decade and he’d endure a million more terrible moments to have just one more like this one with her.

**Author's Note:**

> I _attempted_ to capture this fascinating dynamic, i'd love to know what you all think! Comments are very much appreciated!


End file.
